


ophiophilist

by twigcollins



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Canon, i don't even, i hope you like snakes, maaaagic snakes, no really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 05:49:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6272314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twigcollins/pseuds/twigcollins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Better living through blood magic, and a healthy appreciation for historical restoration.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ophiophilist

Everything is heavy, invisible weights pressing him back against the bed, all satin and silk and his bare skin sensitive to every inch of it, twitching with every slight shift or current in the air. Candles flicker, languid shadows pooling across every surface, a low fire burnt nearly to embers in the corner. If he glances up, he can see just a sliver of the world - the silhouette of lush plants and the sea beyond, moonlight struck across it like flint catching a spark.

A thick, sweet scent in the air, unfamiliar - _incense?_ \- is enough to leave him dizzy. It is all he can do just to breathe - all he wants to do, savoring each slow exhalation. He can’t remember the last time he’s been this relaxed. He can’t remember…

“What’s your name?”

The words come to him through smoke and leaded glass, and he cannot gather the strength to look for the speaker. Responding is an near-equal effort - breathe in, open his mouth and let his tongue slide slowly across his lips, even as he tries to…

“… Trevelyan?” 

There's more. He knows there ought to be more.

“Now, now,” the voice purrs, “that won’t do.”

The slight glint of a blade in candlelight.

“Open your mouth.”

He tips his head back obediently, feels three dark drops patter against his tongue like rain, slide slow down the back of his throat. The taste of sour copper and a new fire that burns, warm and welcome, all the way down. A hand in his hair, even that slight brush of fingertips enough to make him shiver, a moment of tight and desperate _want_ …

“What’s your name?”

He frowns slightly, the answer already gone, falling apart in his mind even as he reaches for it. He makes a soft, confused sound - hadn’t he just…

“Good. That’s very good.” The voice warms with approval, sliding like honey across his skin, erasing that vague sense of unease - it doesn’t matter, not here. Nothing at all matters here until he’s told it should.

It’s a relief not to know, or be the one who has to care.

“Can you feel me inside you?”

An idle question, from an impossible position for it to be true, the voice too far away - but he gasps, twisting as he’s entered, a smooth, sweet slide that leaves him panting, fingers digging into the sheets. No weight on the bed, where a body ought to be bracing, no skin against his own - just that pressure, opening him up, his thighs parting to invite it further in - but there’s no one there, which means he doesn’t have to move. It means nothing he does can stop that slow stretch, the exquisite weight sinking itself deeper into him. 

_Blood magic._ He thinks from a great distance, like a candle flame seen through a half-full goblet, only reflections. As meaningless as a storm passing beyond the edge of the horizon, nothing against the feeling of being taken apart with such care.

“Lie back, now.”

He hadn’t realized he’d even drawn up on his elbows, and light fingertips against his chest settle him back against the bed. He wants those hands on him. He’ll do anything they ask - each request that voice makes a lick of pleasure curling the edge of his thoughts, setting them alight. He sinks into the pillows - lovely and cool against the banked ember of his body. He twists his hips, runs a hand along his own half-hard length, fingers flexing into the nothingness beyond, as if he might coax that phantom seducer into finishing its conquest. 

A chuckle dances across his skin.

“Impatient as ever. Is it that good, when I take you? Does it feel like this?”

The slick, heavy heat inside him begins to move, thrusting in a rising, inexorable rhythm. It’s magic, not flesh - it knows just where to strike him, and how hard, never missing the target. He moans, his own hips rising in response, rutting at the air.

“Now, now - just relax. Stay still, and close your eyes.”

He cannot disobey, even a chiding order, but doing so leaves him trembling. Eyes slipping shut, weak with need and desire, his heartbeat seeming to pound with each thrust, any thought impossible beyond _yes_ and _yes_ and _more_.

“Shhh. Trust me. I’ll make it worth your wait.”

His body is not his own, even his need. The urgency in him ebbs, just slightly, warm waves continuing to roll over him, the movement inside him now more of a steady, constant throb. He feels like a pot that’s been left to simmer at the edge of the fire, and perhaps this is where it will end, just one long, blissful-

A touch, soft and wet and brushing gently across his stomach, spreading over his skin. It caresses his navel briefly, and then sweeps higher - teasing against a nipple that goes instantly pert from the attention. Whatever’s being swirled across him - water? paint? - there’s an odd, lingering coolness he can feel in its wake, a tingle and a slight pull against his skin, something familiar, something he ought to… _lyrium_?

He lets out a slight, questioning sound, but the brush continues on its silent path. Not anything sensible, not runes or symbols, but wide, long strokes like currents of air or the shapes of crashing waves.

“Once upon a time, there was a great and powerful Magister of old.” The voice begins. “It is said he was so fair and fine that even a desire demon was ensnared by his charms, and instead of devouring him at once, it wished to savor him to it's heart’s content - and in doing so, taught him all the arts of love.”

The voice fills him, carries him along, as intoxicating as the movements inside of him, until it is difficult to tell one from the other. He tries to focus on the brush, the cool point of it dipping and diving across his flesh.

“He lived his life as a shrine to Urthemiel, the god of Beauty. Others say he was no less than an aspect of the god himself. Whatever the truth, he was an unrivaled master of seduction. Not that it was difficult - it seems the most wealthy and powerful competed for his favor as if it were the Archon’s seat itself - if not more so. I doubt even the Archon could claim to bring ‘unparalleled ecstasies with a single flick of his finger.’ More’s the pity.”

A sweep of the brush, a brief tease of coolness against his jutting shaft and he groans, helplessly. The lyrium is useless to him now, his own magic drawn from his grasp, in thrall to the same power that’s bound both will and body so completely. If that voice wanted to, he thinks, with a word it could stop his heart. Another word, and he wouldn’t even care.

“It seems he finally withdrew completely from the world, secluded himself and his household to an unfettered devotion of the erotic arts. A pleasure palace, a garden of all delights, with strange and exotic wonders both collected and constructed. One imagines it kept the groundskeepers on their toes.”

The voice spins him down into a tale of deep jungles hiding mad, impossible wonders - the air lush with heady perfumes, skin caressed by the very flowers, petals dipping down to suck and tease. Flocks of bare bodies scattered here and there in and among the trees, the sounds of laughter and passion. A wild, ever-changing menagerie - creatures that were neither men nor beasts, but both, with fur and feathers so soft to the touch, so easy to reach out and bury deep, just let go. 

The palace itself as a wild, tumble-down ruin of open doors, of hallways and corridors paved in twisting vines and sweat-slicked flesh, the walls resplendent with an arsenal of leather and steel, of bindings and lashes and tools without names except a shudder, a curl of desire at the base of the spine. And all this spread out before the world, unguarded beneath a sun dipped low as a ripe peach on the bough - and even in such a place, there were inner rooms, and closed doors, and what could possibly happen there?

“A den of carnality to make even an ancient Magister blush. I can’t say I’d pass up a peek through that peephole.” 

He’s been here, in this bed and this room for some time, calm and pliant and waiting. He remembers vaguely, the echo of an earlier life.

_What sort of fun should I have with you, I wonder? Do I make you untie my boots with your teeth? Spread you out at a party for the guests? Maybe summon something dire and unspeakable to have its wicked way with you?_

He’d started at that, a jolt of danger and fear and definite arousal. As forbidden as anything could be, to even think of trying - of being taken so, his will surrendered. Helpless and plundered. It was a mad wish - he would never dare. He could never ask.

 _Well, now. I can’t say I’m_ entirely _surprised, but it does open up on some rather interesting possibilities. Now that I think on it…_

“Of course,” the voice is saying now, “much of the knowledge of that place was lost long ago - but priorities being what they are, we still know more of it than we ought. Quite a few fragments, well-tended across the ages.”

The brush criss-crosses its own path, the power building slowly on itself - there is a larger purpose here, he is being drawn in to whatever is being made, his body a key component of the spell and it might worry him if he cared, if he could think of anything but how he wants to push up, arch himself into whatever might provide some sort of relief. 

Slick, wet bristles flick sharply, one long stroke between his balls, and even with his eyes closed his vision goes white.

“It occurred to me,” the voice continues leisurely, “that I should probably improve upon on my ancient Tevene, and if I was going to go to all the trouble, I might as well pick an interesting topic.”

A hand is on his leg, just above the knee, one finger tracing gentle circles into his inner thigh. It burns pleasantly, a counterpoint to the cool of the brush that seems to be moving in more intricate patterns now, daubing here and there, a painter making his final touches.

“You’re fortunate, you know, that I enjoy a puzzle. You should be grateful.”

 _Yes,_ he thinks, and _grateful_ and _touch me, please touch me._

That hand, sliding higher, those lips on his throat and then - soon, it must be soon.

“The Magister’s secrets were many, and well kept, but a few did manage to last to our age, in fair enough condition that they might be resurrected by a mage with skill to spare and… incentive. One ritual in particular, they say, that he kept for only his most treasured concubines. The Dance of a Thousand Serpents.”

The brush draws back from one final stroke

“Open your eyes.”

He looks down, to find his skin covered in the curves and coils of snakes, dappled chiaroscuro patterns of shadow and light, large and small, all twined together. As he watches, they seem to move with the flickering candlelight, with each breath he takes - and then his breath catches, and the snakes continue to move.

“That’s… oh…”

He hardly recognizes his own body. It’s hypnotic, the patterns in constant motion, sliding in slow, rhythmic mosaics - and he can feel them pressing down, not quite _real_ but far more than simply shapes that move. He is being stroked, caressed on all sides, gently clutched and released - he shivers, at a soft descent along his spine, and a few of the kinder beasts have even looped down low around his hips, curling now and then around his cock and sliding, squeezing, as if he needed the help to stay hard.

The slenderest of them is barely more than an elegant line, a curving blur that slips along his skin, sliding down past his navel. He drops his gaze, trying to follow, half-certain he’d been mistaken in seeing it at all, when he finally catches a flick of motion at the head of his cock. A strange and unexpected pressure as the creature disappears up his slit, vanishing in an instant.

He’s stunned, still not quite sure what’s happened, even as he feels it moving up into him - coiling and uncoiling, squeezing him from the inside until his vision blurs and his breath stutters in his throat. On the outside, another snake grips his shaft in response - he’s being worked steadily from both sides and he would scream if he could find the breath for it, would likely die if he could remember how.

No shame then, that he does not quite notice another as serpent of ink and lyrium slides its way down the back of his thigh, wending cool and low, much larger and longer than the other and wonderfully solid when it slithers into him.

He chokes at the swiftness of it, and before he can recover it moves further in as well, twists itself until he feels it rub and brush and slip just _so_ and the whole world bottoms out in sudden bliss. He is helpless to do any more than gasp as his head rolls back, to arch against that writhing and let it consume him completely. 

Two snakes, just two of them have reduced him to this, and there are still _so many more_ spread out across his skin. A thousand serpents, dancing. 

Mercifully, the creatures slow their luxurious torture, and he opens his eyes to see a hand poised over his body, fingers gracefully arched. The snakes are waiting, as he has been waiting - on the command of their shared master.

“So, what do you think? A fairly accurate translation?”

Dimly, he recognizes the amusement, the smugness - but let that voice be smug. Let it be anything it wants as long as this doesn’t stop. The snake inside him twitches again, and he quivers like a plucked chord.

“Please…” he gasps. “Please.”

So good, and so far beyond his control - and more of it… more would surely wreck him. He won’t be able to, he shouldn’t….

“Tell me.”

He can’t. He doesn’t have the breath for more than two words together, and even that scatters, every time the clever creatures move even the barest measure. His cock already feels so heavy, overfull with its new passenger, that constant, slow constriction…

“I need…” he groans, “please, I can’t… I need…”

“Yes?” The voice wants to hear him. It delights in specificity.

“Fill me.” _Take me. End me. Anything._ “Please… I need… _please_ … fill me.” 

A soft snap of those fingers seals his fate, the snakes sliding over his skin and down into him in an steady, inexorable onslaught.

He cries out, lit up around an relentless assault that does not ebb, and just when he thinks he might catch a full breath, do anything other than shudder and moan one of the smaller beasts coils around a larger serpent in its haste, gliding through him in a judder of bliss that leaves him reeling. He blinks dazedly, panting, lost in the tide and it is only when the largest of them begins to push its way inside, a merciless, endless flex against him that he finally, finally comes, a spasm that rocks him all the way through. He is weightless and electric, whimpering in raw, thoughtless ecstasy as the great, glistening bulk of it slips fully within.

He lies sprawled and senseless in the aftermath, one hand on his stomach, feeling the rippling coils shudder beneath his skin. Dimly, he realizes he’d expected them to vanish once he’d finally spent, but he is still stretched tight, each lazy motion, each bunching movement sending a cascade of new pleasure along already well-used nerves. The larger creatures twist slowly, deliciously within him, while the smaller rub and tangle themselves up against his most sensitive places. The smallest of them all still nestles gently at the base of his cock, and every now and again it will tighten, pressing at him in a way that makes his vision wobble and his breath come short. 

Distantly, he hears a hum of contentment, a cool, damp cloth daubing at him, cleaning him of his drying seed - pressing lightly against his abdomen, against the backs of creatures that rise up to meet it, another wave of warm oblivion scattering him into senseless pieces. He is content just to drift - time going flat and vague and unimportant, the world no more than this room, nothing but the way he’s been so completely overrun by the languid movements of the beasts beneath his skin. 

His fingers twitch idly, and after a while it seems quite a pleasant notion to let his hand fall further, to touch himself, though he is amusingly clumsy with the attempt. A brief palm of his cock, a stroke at his balls, until he’s finally content just letting his fingers dangle close to his opening, a slim tail slipping out now and then to curl around his knuckles, and when he tries to draw himself free he sees stars.

It takes him a while to realize he’s being watched - no, not just watched, but a silent suggestion that had guided his hand all along, an inclination more powerful than his own idle fancy. Trying to face the compulsion head on is like attempting to think through stone. 

“You… did that? You made me… want to…”

“Guilty as charged.” The voice says, not sounding at all remorseful, and the idea of it - of pleasuring himself, of being pleasured by that most appreciative audience…

A serpent twists deeply, the large, dark one, and his mind falls away, lost in the drag and slip of scales against his skin… 

He startles, as a hand brushes his hair back, a pair of thoughtful eyes gazing into his own. Drifting again, unaware of the approach - but here he is at last, the owner of that voice. Unknown but so very familiar, and those eyes are lovely, fierce and quick and sharp - a creature that hunts, that notices everything and never stops thinking. He can see candlelight glinting in the corners of those eyes, tiny flickers that grow more fascinating as he watches. A hand against his cheek and he sighs, shuts his own eyes, leaning in. 

“Look at you." As if admiring a favored sculpture, a picture on the wall. "You're entirely undone.”

Unraveled and drifting, always drifting. In the dark, it’s so difficult to keep from losing himself again in the lovely tangle within, the lithe bodies that curve and knot and slip apart, once and again. He wants to fade into it, to let it or that voice or both consume him utterly.

“Before he left the court, it’s said that the Magister was also the most brutal of interrogators. Granting particular ‘favors’ to those he imprisoned, so they would not think of escaping.”

So that they would not think, ever again. He tries to imagine it, how long he would last, plugged tight and left like a cask of wine in some dark forgotten corner, with nothing but the endless, writhing dance … He shudders, hopes it is only in horror. A fingertip slides along his jaw, the touch drawing him back the same as a boat pulled gently to shore. He sees concern in those sharp, tiercel’s eyes, out of place in this play of power and control.

“Almost finished now, _amatus_. Can you take a little more?”

He nods, slowly, rewarded with a brilliant smile. He would pull down gods to see that smile. 

“I believe we can consider this a victory for historical reenactment.” One knuckle slides down slowly along his inner thigh, and then up, fingertips gently coaxing him open, the magic pooling in his hand. “Now, relax. Breathe for me.”

It's nearly more than he can bear this time. The snakes feel just as good going out as they had on their way in, and he’s suddenly tired, more weary with each one that slips free, a long, sinuous slide that seems to run heavy fingers down his spine from the inside - too much, too much - until pleasure edges nearly into pain but the voice is there, always there. It soothes, and reassures as he is emptied out with an aching slowness, the creatures dissolving into flecks of glittering light, quickly fading to nothing in the dexterous hands that draw them out.

The one in his cock is the very last to go, with the long, slow slide of a hand down his shaft as he trembles, one thumb pressing in hard just behind the head - a warm, final lick of dissolving magic and he jerks his hips, cries out, but there’s so little left of him to give.

“Poor thing. I’ve completely worn you out.” The voice says, though it mostly sounds proud of itself.

He feels tired, empty and oddly off-balance, though the sense of being slightly outside himself is not an unpleasant one.

A hardness presses slightly against his thigh, a body rubbing gently against his own, and he can taste the smile in the kiss. 

“Room for one more?”

 _Bring it on._ A distant thought, from whoever he is when he isn’t this. A soft laugh comes in response, as if he’d been heard.

He’s taken again, and this time with warm, real skin pressed fast against his own, a very human heat finally sliding into that already tender junction that makes him whimper, exhausted and still ready and grateful - never sated, not by this. 

“Beautiful.” The voice says above him, unsteady at the edges as it rocks inside of him. “You’re so beautiful.”

“… love you.”

“Always, _amatus_. Always.”

He is filled again - one last, sweet flood of warmth - and he would gladly move if he could, stroke that hair, let his fingers trail the curve of a hip but his body no longer seems to be interested in listening, even the all-important voice now little more than a low and pleasant buzz, no matter how hard he tries to focus.

Distantly, he feels his head tipped back, swallowing reflexively from the cup at his lips - the water cold and sweet and refreshing - and then he’s laid gently down, an arm around his waist, the familiar tickle of a mustache pressed against his back and he’s out before his next breath. 

———————————————————

No reason to wake up fast, so he lingers, with Dorian a lean, limp weight against his side. In the distance, he can hear the ocean hitting the shore. It sounds like home. Nothing’s sounded like home in a very long time.

The room looks different now, with the little light that gets in past the curtains. No longer shadowed and indistinct, he can see the marble floors and painted ceilings, great wooden wardrobes against the walls that are likely twice as old as he is. An inherited room in an inherited life, and he hopes Dorian has found some joy in making it his own. A breeze passes over him, lovely and cool, though it makes Dorian mutter, one hand groping inelegantly as he searches for a blanket. Not quite the master of all that he’d been last night - and a part of him shivers in something other than fear, at the memory of being so completely overwhelmed.

“Good morning.”

“No,” Dorian says, not opening his eyes. “No, it’s not.” Still not a morning person, even after all this time.

“Afternoon?”

“Today can wait until tomorrow. Go back to sleep.” 

He feels a momentary, dizzy heaviness in his limbs, the faint hint of that lingering compulsion, though it doesn’t last long. Dorian had explained the spell down to the last detail, before they’d ever started - it was simple, temporary, would _not_ catch the attention of anything nasty, or leave any openings for future attack. Which should all mean success, and that he is finished with this - his curiosity sated, one toe across the line, just a taste of the forbidden and now…

He wonders how many other spells there are out there, waiting to be reborn.

“How are you feeling?” Dorian murmurs, with perhaps the slightest hint of trepidation - the mage had led him a long, long way, down paths he’d never thought he would dare to take.

He rolls over, gathering his love in his arms.

“… like I was fucked silly by magic snakes?”

A chuckle, and Dorian settles more comfortably against his chest. 

“Welcome to Minrathous.”


End file.
